Stop-Loss

Kimberly Peirce

Plot Summary

After serving his tour of duty in Iraq, a young American soldier who is ordered to return to the front lines as part of the military's controversial stop-loss opts instead to go AWOL in a thought-provoking military drama directed by Kimberly Peirce and starring Ryan Phillippe.

Screenwriters

Producers

Rotten Tomatoes Movie Reviews

TOMATOMETER

Top Critics' Reviews

Fresh: As a nation, we owe them more than they owe us -- as this painfully necessary and heartfelt movie makes abundantly clear. – Richard Schickel, TIME Magazine, Jun 24, 2010

Rotten: Stop-Loss can't quite decide whether to focus on making a powerful statement on a controversial and unfamiliar military policy or on a more predictable drama about the traumatic effect of war on young people's lives. – Claudia Puig, USA Today, Jun 24, 2010

Fresh: Stop-Loss is not a great movie, but it's forceful, effective, and alive, with the raw, mixed-up emotions produced by an endless war -- a time when the patriotism of military families is in danger of being exploited beyond endurance. – David Denby, New Yorker, Jun 24, 2010

Fresh: Clearly, Peirce's motives are pure. She's not using the 'stop-loss' issue as a wedge to make the government or the administration look bad. She's using it to dramatize an injustice and to advocate on behalf of the soldiers. – Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle, Jun 24, 2010

Customer Reviews

Worst movie of the year

by
skipashton

If i could give this movie zero stars i think i would, and the reason why is best described in a review written by Eric A. Rutherford who said:
So, I am sitting here in Iraq watching this tripe, and I want to puke. It is such an innacurate portrayal of the war, the military, and Soldiers.
This "hero" is a coward. He lets his whole outfit go back without him. If he was such a great Soldier, leader and hero, he would have been the first in line.
Yeah, people get stop lossed. When I VOLUNTEERED to come to Iraq, I knew that I was going to get stop lossed MONTHS in advance.
The idea that the day you go to ETS, they just drop it on you as an individual that you are stop lossed is preposterous. Yeah, the Army can hang onto you for however long the need to. It is part of the deal. Yeah, if you join you might have to go to war. If you enlisted VOLUNTARILY after 9/11 and don't think you are going to war, you are an idiot.
This film portrays cowards as heros. From what I hear, it is being lauded in the states as some form of great tale of how things really are over here, and how they are for my brothers in arms upon their return home.
Nobody asked us to sign up for this. We knew the deal when we signed the papers and swore an oath before God that we would serve our nation for those who could not serve for themselves.
This film is a disgrace, and puts a black mark on all of the heroic deeds of the brave men and women over here on their first, second, or seventh deployment.
Thanks for your view of this movie beaing an active duty soilder in Iraq, and not the people who wrote the other reviews who just sit around all day having no idea of what the military is actually like

WOW! Inaccurate propaganda

by
Tide Pride

The movie starts off boring and stays that way. The script is poor and so is the acting. On top of that you feel as if you're watching a propaganda film glorifying a coward. You really get that "Message shoved down your throat feel." I'm glad I watched this at a friends house. I'd be fuming if I'd paid for it or rented it. Definetly stay away. Rent/Buy something else.

Great movie about a subject that is covered up

by
ridesdeepsnow

Do not listen to the idiot reviews on here giving this story 1 star and calling it a story of a coward. When the government has a contract with a person and breaks their end of the deal the citizen is a coward???? I knew many Marines in my company that were completely screwed by the government this exact same way. Fighting a war for oil that is called a war against terrorism is the biggest joke of the 21st century. I hope more military personnel go AWOL to show the government they can't fail in their own contracts.